Wednesday, November 23, 2005

I have often wondered how the most hated man in the world feels about his plight - especially around the holidays. No, I'm not talking about President Bush, rather the unidentified man probably living somewhere in the great northwest near Seattle in the United States of America. He is a married father of four, white, Catholic, and works for Microsoft. He drives an SUV to work everyday and stops by Wal-Mart on his way home for something he doesn't really need but wants anyway. He pays his taxes in full, his mortgage on time, and contributes to the collection plate at his church every week (and to the Salvation Army when he can). After regularly putting in 50 hour weeks he plays golf with his buddies on the odd Staurday, but lives for his for his salmon fishing trips once a year. He tries to spend time with his kids but never feels like he doing enough for them, despite the football and soccer games, and the dance recitals he never misses.

Yes, he is the most hated man in the world.

When he sits down for his turkey dinner this Thanksgiving he had better realize that because of him and his decadent lifestyle millions around the world will suffer. What a bastard.

My fellow Americans we should be ashamed of ourselves. We are going to sit down, bow our heads, and thank the Lord for the goodness he has showered upon us and we will think nothing of how we are destroying this planet that is the source of this bounty. In the process of raping the world to make our lives comfortable we deprive countless third-worlders even a bare subsistence. Why the best thing we could do is throw off our prosperous shackles and join with our third-world brothers and sisters and suffer. Then and only then would the world be set right again.

[SLAP]Whew, thanks for waking me up! For a minute there I was starting to believe the rhetoric of the left.

In all seriousness I can't take this anymore. I am fed up to here with the America haters inside and outside this great land. The answer to poverty and scarcity in the third-world is surely not a weak and impoverished America. Nothing could be further from the truth. The answer to poverty is prosperity. Yes, what is needed is more rich people and people who want to be rich.

It is constantly pointed out that America with only 5-6% of the world population uses 25% of it's resources. It's been said that if China and India used the planet's resources in the the same ratio that Americans do the planet would be completely denuded. This, of course, is a specious argument, it doesn't work that way. In fact if you want a lesson in how resource allocation really works one has to look no further than the oil industry right now. China's appetite for oil is increasing exponentially and so too is the price per barrel. Currently it is still the most cost efficient energy source for powering a modern industrial economy, but at some point it won't be. And then other forms of energy will take over.

As the resources that are currently pulled from the ground become scarce the cost will rise and new technologies will arise (out of necessity) to recycle what we currently disgard. This is already happening to some degree, even when the act of doing so is not actually cost efficient in today's economy. In the process we, as Americans and everyone else as well, will become ever more efficient and ever more prosperous.

Greater productivity and management of scarce resources will also have a positive benefit for the environment (if the global warming cabal doesn't shut us down first). Since America uses 25% or more of the world's resources then logic should indicate that we would also be the world's most polluted nation as well. But we are not, not even close. The capitalist West is an untouched wilderness compared to the industrial nations of the former Soviet-bloc. The current economic darlings of China and India are extremely polluted because poverty does not clean up after itself the way prosperity does. Again, the answer to pollution is not a weak and impoverished West, but rather a rich and prosperous third-world.

So, my fellow Americans as we sit down to our turkey dinner this Thanksgiving it is right to give thanks to the good Lord, but we should also put in a good word for the rest of the world in hopes that they will seek prosperity and ignore the "greens" and the "leftists" who continue to shower virtue on sickness that is poverty.

Higher Math

OK, I'll bite. What is this?

Well, that's a good question... I can't wait to find out either!

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